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Authored by Emily O’Brien and Andrew Sinclair, The Libyan War is a historical account of the diplomatic negotiations across international and regional organizations around the international intervention in Libya. The narrative is intended to serve as a resource for those involved in discussions of multilateral crisis management in Libya, and to provide background information for officials and analysts involved in post-conflict reconstruction.

“The narrative has deliberately been designed to give an international perspective on diplomacy over Libya, interweaving discussions in different organizations, rather than telling ‘the NATO story,’ ‘the African Union story,’ and so on separately,” writes Richard Gowan, associate director for the Managing Global Order program at CIC. “Ultimately, the narrative offers no final opinion on the lessons of Libya. We hope that scholars and policy analysts will mine it for information in developing their own conclusions.”

O’Brien is a program officer in the Managing Global Order program at CIC; Sinclair is a former program officer in the Global Peace Operations program at CIC.

The Center on International Cooperation (CIC) has published The Libyan War: A Diplomatic History, a report summarizing international discussions of the Libyan crisis from its start in February to the mid-August rebel assault on Tripoli.